However, the latest
statistics showing that youth crime and drug and alcohol abuse, among
other social ills, are plunging. Mindful of these, generational historians Neil
Howe and William Strauss argue, in Millennials Rising: The Next Great
Generation, that the new Millennials (youngsters born after 1981)
"manifest a wide array of positive social habits that older Americans no
longer associate with youth: teamwork, achievement, modesty and good
conduct." Commentators who assume that Millennials will continue the
"selfishness in personal manner, risk-taking with sex and drugs
[and] crime, violence and social decay" of grungy-gangsta Generation X
(born 1961-1981) commit fallacious "straight-line thinking," the
authors contend.

What both the optimistic Howe and Strauss and the
negativist others suggest is that stern adult authority produces model kids,
while freedom yields brats. While the negativists call for renewed grown-up
authority to "rescue," "revive" and "save" the
wayward young, Howe and Strauss argue that adult crackdowns on youths in the 1990s
have already nullified the effects of 30 years of permissiveness to forge
disciplined, "no-nonsense kids."

But this homily wilts in the
face of reality. The permissively raised, universally deplored Generation X
(especially California's version) is the true "great generation," for
it has braved a hostile social climate to reverse the abysmal trends of their
baby-boomer predecessors.

Boomers' youthful
difficulties are understandable legacies of the politically and morally
turbulent 1960s. But three decades of adult arrogance, selfishness and
puritanical hypocrisy since then are not. Sixties boomers pushed peace, civil
rights and noble ideals; in the 1990s, they presided over a draconian war on
drugs, resegregation and me-first politics. Boomers owe their record affluence
to free quality education and opportunities paid for by their elders. But when
it came their turn to pay the bills, they slashed their taxes and imposed
sacrifices on youth. Ceaseless in their praise of "family values,"
boomers constitute America's most family-destroying adults ever. Modern
authorities who slander teenagers as bearers of drugs, crime and egocentrism
are really describing boomers.

Middle-age and elder
selfishness has taken an appalling toll. California's once-exemplary public
schools, universities and youth services deteriorated because of layoffs and
overcrowding after older voters awarded themselves nearly 60% in tax cuts,
beginning with Proposition 13 in 1978. The state's per-pupil funding fell from
fifth nationally to 37th in 1998. University tuition rocketed 600% in real
dollars. Student debts soared from near zero in the 1960s to $4 billion in the
1990s. The percentage of impoverished youth doubled as industries slashed jobs
and young-family income fell 20%. Twice as many Gen-Xer children grew up in
fractured non-families, as drug abuse, arrest and imprisonment tripled among
their parents, whose average marriage lasted 80 months.

The few bad Gen-Xer trends—notably,
the early-1990s surge in teen births, street violence and murder—principally
afflicted youth suffering from high unemployment and poverty. It was not
permissive parenting, but aging boomers' demand for crack cocaine and heroin
that touched off the drug-supply warfare and gang violence in the inner cities.
In the late 1990s, crime rates among the state's poorest black and Latino
youths dropped to levels below those of the 1970s. Imprisonment of California's
young black men fell 35% during the 1990s, while drug abuse and imprisonment
among white and black men over age 30 soared, statistics that challenge the
familiar nostrum that older men should "rescue" young inner-city
males. Despite claims of rising suicide, a black teen today is only one-third
as likely to take his own life as his 1970 counterpart.

Trends among California's white kids, purportedly
the most permissively indulged, show that Gen-Xer improvements would have been
more spectacular had their elders not imposed the poverty and disinvestment
that endangered poorer youth. White teens comprise California's fastest-declining
criminal population. Every year in the 1970s, about 55,000 white youth were
arrested for felonies and 80 were charged with murder. By contrast, the
respective 1990s statistics are 25,000 felonies and 50 murders a year.

In the
1990s, psychologists warned that teen culture had turned "toxic," yet
white teens' safety improved amazingly: Rates of suicide, gun death and murder
fell 40%; drug-related deaths dropped 45%; and all deaths as a result of
violence plunged 50%. By the mid-'90s, California Gen-Xers had erased the
perils that boomers had brought at every age level. A UCLA survey comparing
1992 freshman girls to their 1969 counterparts said it all: The former boasted
three times the varsity sports letters, and only one-seventh as many took
sedatives.

Now, the Millennial teens,
despite rare but terrible exceptions such as school shootings, are extending
the Gen-Xers' improvements. The latest—1999—statistics show the hazards of
being a California teen at record lows: suicide, lowest level since 1959;
homicide, lowest since 1967; violent and other felony crime, lowest since 1967;
drug deaths, a bit higher than Gen-Xers' but still 80% below boomers' rates;
violent death, lowest ever; and birth rates, lowest since 1940.

What caused this
unexpectedly healthier youth behavior? Howe and Strauss' answer, mostly based
on anecdotal evidence, credits curfews, school uniforms, a "zero
tolerance" drug policy, curriculum standards and strict parenting.
Malarkey! The two decades of impressive Gen-Xer improvements long predated the
current get-tough fervor, and accumulating research shows that curfews, zero
tolerance and other responses to youth troubles are feckless.

A more positive-and revealing-answer
may be that Gen-Xers' compensated for their boomer parents' disarray by
assuming more adult responsibilities at younger ages and refusing to emulate
their elders' excesses. Contrary to their detractors, Gen-Xer teens proved
admirably competent in handling adult freedoms and duties. The most worrisome
question is whether boomers, whose political power is peaking, will reverse or
exacerbate their record as the generation that wrecked California's once-rich
promise to its young.